You may have noticed I wrote “Tokyo Idol Festival 2012” instead of the cooler and more accurate “Tokyo Reira Festival”. That is a subtle hint that this article is a serious TIF resource. For once in my life, no more joking around. Everyone is sick of it!
TIF Stage Layout:
Secret Court and TIF double rainbow
Hot Stage, Doll Factory, Smile Garden… Secret Court… Fantastic Theater… wait a sec… Secret “what”? Oh my God, I think I stumbled across something I absolutely was not supposed to find out about.
Secret Court, where all of your most secret idol dreams come true!
With that out of the way, let’s talk TIF schedules. *sips a huge jug of chamomile tea*
Twenty percent of the fun of Tokyo Idol Festival is creating your personalized schedule.
Day One
Day Two
TIF weather
If Odaiba is as hot as I think it may be, then I’ll probably scrap large portions of the above schedules, specifically any of the outdoor stages between 12 and 4PM. Of course there would be a few exceptions, like predia on Day 1 @ Sky stage. If Reiko has to be out in the sun, then I’ll suffer along with her. And if the hottest group at TIF is performing during the hottest part of the day, the chance that they will wear less clothing than normal increases by a million percent.
Awesome, PASSPO is finally opening for predia! Just as it was prophesied by that one guy a hundred years ago. Balance has been restored to the something something.
TIF Strategy
There is a surprisingly large amount of strategy that is involved in planning the ultimate TIF schedule. You can’t just arrive at TIF and decide: I’ll watch ‘Oh Campee’ for ten hours. And then maybe casually stroll to the main stage and check out ‘SUPER GiRLS’. For scientific purposes of course. I have to verify if they really are “super”. And that they are “girls”.
When planning which stage to go to you have to keep in mind the location of the stage and it’s proximity to the next stage you want to visit, and the popularity of the groups to determine when you should arrive for optimum seating (which may require leaving one performance early). If you look at the map, for a few of the stages like the Secret Court (Please don’t talk about Secret Court) and Sky Stage, they are both on the Fuji TV roof, so unless that map isn’t to scale, all you have to do is turn around and you are at the other stage. “Hey look it’s Fudanjuku” *turns around* “Hey look it’s… I have no idea” *turns around* “It’s Fudanjuku!” *turns around* “Still don’t know who that is”. But if you want to go from either of the roof stages to the Hot Stage at Zepp DiverCity, that would take the longest time out of any of the stage combinations. I’m guessing it would take at least 20 minutes, because you have to go down the elevator to exit the building (which the TIF website actually warns may be congested) before heading to Zepp and the main stage. And the entire time you would have to avoid nomadic hordes of wotas who are peacefully grazing on the grass. But once they see you they would like nothing better than to attack and steal your glowsticks.
Another thing to keep in mind are “Chain combos”. And that is the only nerdy video game reference that will ever come out of this blog. Ideally you’d want to choose a stage where you can link one group you’re interested in with another, and then another, and so on. For instance during Day 1 at Secret Court (really gotta stop talking about this stage) there is a 3 chain combo of Party Rockets, AeLL, and Up Up Girls. Individually I wouldn’t want to head to this stage, but their appeal goes up a lot when they are in succession. The best chain combo might be “Afilia Saga East -> LinQ -> 1st gen Idoling -> Palet.
“Another thing to keep in mind” Part II
Outside of your personal top-tier groups, there are groups that are lower priority, but you’d still want to see at least once. For me, these are groups like the already mentioned Party Rockets, AeLL, and Up Up Girls… and also Cheeky Parade (unless they are acting too cheeky), Palet, EbiChu, Risa Yoshiki, Dorothy Little Happy (unless they are acting too Dorothy-y), Station, Tokyo Girl’s Style, and CQC’s. If you want to see one of these lower priority groups at least one time though, it can really complicate things because they are randomly mixed into the giant schedule and may result in sacrificing a performance of your top group. For example I want to see predia four times. But if you are being really stubborn about seeing certain groups, it really limits your ability to see some of the groups lower down your list. I mean is it absolutely necessary to see predia at all four of their performances, considering I’ll be seeing them again at LUMINE the Idol Fes on 8/6? Yes. Yes it is necessary. Reiko is going to be there.
TIF Trivia
Which of these is not the name of a group that will attend TIF?
A. shake
B. stir
C. splash
I wish there was an option for “All of the above”, but the answer is B.
Battle of the gravure idols. Who will be the best gravure idol in Odaiba on 8/4?
A. Yui Koike (Tomato n’ Pine)
B. Ai Shinozaki (AeLL)
C. Risa Yoshiki
The correct answer is Ayaka Komatsu of course. She’ll be at Tokyo Auto Style that day. I said best idol in Odaiba, not TIF.
Nep She☆Stars
I haven’t mentioned this group yet. And let’s keep it that way. Seriously horrible name. I have standards for how bad a group’s name can be before I have to call them out. It’s about principles.
And they are using the PASSPO and SUPER GiRLS star (☆). There should be an idol committee that overseas the use of the “☆” to prevent injustices like this.
SUPER GiRL Talk 